Suspicious Minds

 

“There is no fear in love; but perfect love casts out fear, because fear involves torment. But he who fears has not been made perfect in love.” – 1 John 4:18

God woke me up this morning with Elvis!  He’s singing in my head, “We can’t go on together…with suspicious minds.  And, we can’t build our dre-ee-eams, on suspicious mi—inds!” So, I guess God would like to have us think on the stronghold of a suspicious mind today. 

As we’ve already discussed, a stronghold is a wall built within your mind by evil spirits that takes your emotions and behavior captive.  It prevents the truth from entering in and setting you free.  Satan has special causes for using a suspicious mind.  This is a stronghold that divides families, churches, and relationships. Yes, divide and conquer is still his war strategy!

Suspicious minds can be generalized, meaning you trust no one, or they can be centralized, meaning your suspicions are focused on one person, such as a spouse, best friend, or even a parent. As the suspicions are allowed to build, the stronghold grows taller, and the dis-trust-o-meter goes up, up, up!

So what causes a suspicion to build?  It can be a broken trust, such as even a simple lie.  It could be as simple as a parent saying “Tomorrow, I’ll take you to the movies.”  But when tomorrow comes, and the promise of a movie is broken, so is trust.  (Parents, be careful not to promise what you cannot deliver.  Don’t make into fact what you mean to be tentative. Little hearts are easily broken.) 

Sometimes, Satan can plant the tiniest seed of suspicion and feed it more and more lies to make it grow.  I remember a lady I use to work with who was a seed planter.  She came to me continually with little seeds, such as “Did you know that so-in-so is pregnant? She and her husband have been separated for a year! That’s not his child!”  Was it factual?  Nope.  Neither the pregnancy nor the separation were true.  But what the suspicion of the lady’s character did was change my opinion of her, until I found the truth!  Stay away from seed planters!

At other times, suspicions can arouse from bigger breaks of trust, such as finding out a best friend has gossiped your secret conversations, or that a spouse has had an affair.  Mistrust tends to bleed over from one person to another with stronghold building thoughts like, “if I can’t trust my own husband, who can I trust?” Oh be careful of what voices you believe! Discern the truth!  One person’s lack of faithfulness does not condemn everyone to the same sin.

1 John 4:18 says that “There is no fear in love; but perfect love casts out fear, because fear involves torment.” Suspicious minds are tormentors!  We let our minds lead us to believe the lies of Satan until we react to his lies!  Many marriages have been broken – not because of infidelity – but because of the suspicion of infidelity.  But suspicion can be overcome with love.

When Satan plants his seed of mistrust, his building blocks for the stronghold of a suspicious mind, go get the facts!  There’s nothing like a one-on-one conversation with the one you have trouble trusting to dispel all doubts.  Stop the seed from taking root and get the facts right away, that very minute!  And friends, if this seed of doubt came from a “seed planter”, rebuke that horned devil face to face as well!  You should not have to fight the same enemy twice, and though they may come to you as a friend to spread their little lies, friends don’t lie to you – about you or anyone else!

Maybe you’ve held mistrust for far too long to find the facts.  Maybe the stronghold has already been built and you’re living the misery of not being able to trust people as a whole, or specific people, such as members of the opposite sex, friends or family members.  To you I beg, pray and let God’s word consume your mind!  You do not deserve to be miserable, and this is not God’s plan for you. 

Pray for discernment, to know the heart of the man or woman you need to trust.  God knows the hearts of each and every one of us.  Let Him lead you.  And don’t look for trouble where trouble doesn’t exist, letting your suspicious mind roam free.  Search out the truth in prayer.  Trust God, and He will deliver it.

Read His word.  There is something so powerful about consuming the truth of God’s word to fight the lies of Satan.  If you want to learn God’s voice, read His word, and allow Him time to talk to your soul.  You will find that His word and His voice will help you control your fears.

Friends, there’s no easy way to conquer suspicion except to make yourself vulnerable, and love anyway.  In John 14:27 Jesus says “Peace I leave with you, My peace I give to you; not as the world gives do I give to you. Let not your heart be troubled, neither let it be afraid.” Don’t be afraid to love.  Lean on Him, and let Him calm your mind.  You can trust God to tell you the truth about all things, “because He loves you too much ba-a-by!”